The 15K that wasn't.....

After getting to bed at 1:30 am Saturday morning & not sleeping all that great I had to get up at 7:30 because I had a race to run. I'd signed up for the Mardi Gras Mambo weeks ago. Everything had been going fine until last weekend when I ran 8 miles. Around mile 5.5 my foot started to hurt. It felt like the tongue of my shoe was rubbing my foot. I figured no biggie, keep running & it'll be fine once I take the shoe off. Yeh, not so much. I limped around for a couple of days & Thursday night I put my shoes on & ran around in the house to see how it felt. All was good! Not perfect but I could run.

The Mardi Gras Mambo also has a 10K so I thought worse case scenario I'll just run it. Well, I had to make the decision pretty early during the race because of the turnoff. That wasn't a problem because the foot was bothering me. Nothing awful but definitely not right.

I  spoke of the dreaded overpass that were part of the course for my Half Marathons. Twice for the last one. I'm not really sure what it is about this overpass that it's on EVERY race route but you had to go over it twice in this race too. Once at the beginning & once close to the end. NOT. A. FAN.

Around mile 5 the foot was hurting. Not just uncomfortable. I was thanking God that I hadn't been stupid & tried to run the 15K. I had high hopes of less than an hour finish. Yeh, that didn't happen. Although, looking back at my training times I've never done a 10K that fast. As much as I hate that stupid overpass I talked myself through it the second time. I was not going to let that stupid thing get the best of me. I was not going to walk either. A lot of people were walking but I kept telling myself that I'd be finished faster if I kept running. My foot actually felt better running uphill.

At mile 5.6 I thought I was going to have to stop. I was in serious pain. I kept running. After I realized under an hour wasn't happening I decided my goal was under 1:07. As I got close to the finish line I knew I could make it & I wanted to be finished so bad I sped up. Well, there was a chick next to me & when I sped up so did she. I was thinking to myself "Chick, I'm not racing you, I'm just trying to get finished because I'm in pain". She beat me. I wanted to say "Congratulations, you beat a 40 yr old with a gimp foot" but I didn't because that would've been snarky & I seriously didn't care. I was finished. YAY! My official time was 1:05:55.

I now have 3 medals!!! Who would've ever thought?!!?

I'm going to do some research on how they measure a course. When I train I have my phone for my music & watch for distance. My watch mileage is always less than what the phone says & I always go by my watch. The last 2 races my watch has said I went further than the actual race.

It's been brought to my attention that some people don't know what all the numbers on the watch mean. Shout out Kerri!! So I'll explain......

So the 6.35 at the top is the mileage I ran, 9:02 AM - well, that's the time. 1:06:38 is the time it took me to run the 6.35 mi. - My watch time is different from my official race time because I started it before I crossed the starting line & it was a bit after I finished when I stopped it. The 175 with the heart by it is my average heart rate during the run. That's a little higher than normal for me & I attribute that to the pain I was in. My watch has a chest strap that monitors your heart rate. 620 c is the calories I burned during the run & the big 10:30 was my average pace per mile.

After the race I limped over to the post race party & had some jambalaya & king cake cake balls. YUUUMMM! Then it was home to get ready for our Godchild's birthday party.

He had a Lego cake.

It tasted as good as it looked!

Lane opening his gifts.

We were able to go to Mass after the party. I was so grateful that I wasn't going to have to get up so early Sunday morning. After Mass we were going to dinner & we decided to go to Fleur de Lis & have pizza. It's so good but normally it's hard to get a table & evern harder to get pizza. We walked in & grabbed a table & were promptly told, an hour - an hour 10 mins. for pizza. We were there, I'd already almost injured my foot more in their lovely gravel parking lot, we were staying. I decided I needed a Dr. Pepper.

They have the cute little 8 oz. bottles. These remind me of when I was a kid. My great aunt owned a music store & she had a Coke machine in the store that only had these little bottles in it. She would always open it & let us have drinks. It's also a great way to limit my DP intake. When you serve bottles, there's no such thing as free refills so I just stuck to one. The pizza was delicious!!

Sunday I had plans to go with Dean to the LSU Baseball game. The season opener was Friday night. In light of my injury & the fact that walking was difficult I decided that going up & down stairs at the game probably wasn't a wise idea. Not to mention that I was tired & feeling too lazy to put on makeup. I stayed home & iced my foot, read,  watched TV & did some laundry. Exciting stuff. Our friend Matt that is a former Athletic Trainer said that it's highly likely my foot issue is tendinitis. I concur because I'm the queen of tendinitis. Advil & ice are always his advice for that.  I'm happy to report my foot feels good. Not good enough to run but good enough that I'm not limping all over the place anymore. I was able to do some burpees last night. Gingerly, but I got them done so I think I'm on the mend. I hope so because I want to run a St. Patrick's Day 5K.

Toodles!